"Take a Hike, Save the World" at Historical Museum

“Take a Hike, Save the World,” a new exhibit at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, celebrates the region’s hiking trails and public lands through historic photographs, paintings, and historical items from the Museum’s collections. The exhibit is a visual journey through Santa Barbara’s most scenic areas, as seen by artists and photographers beginning in 1875 – areas that can still be seen today from hiking trails and in open space saved from development. Programming will include talks, hikes, film screenings and 1^st Thursdays. The exhibition opens May 26 and runs through November 13, 2022. For more information, visit www.sbhistorical.org/hike .

“Our goal is to inspire our visitors to explore, enjoy, and above all preserve the natural beauty that surrounds us,” says Museum Director Dacia Harwood. “The exhibition is a reminder of the fragility of these landscapes, which are under threat, not just by development, but from the toll taken by effects of climate change, wildfires, mudslides, and extreme drought.”

The Historical Museum is one of 14 local museums and cultural institutions participating in a countywide collaboration focused on raising awareness of climate change. “Impact: Climate Change & the Urgency of Now” features exhibits, events, and programs offering imaginative, thought-provoking perspectives though art, history, science, and nature ( www.sbmuseumsalliance.org ).

About the Exhibit

Late 19^th to late 20^th century paintings, all from the Museum’s collection, explore Santa Barbara’s foothill canyons and coastal bluffs, Montecito trails, coastal areas from Goleta to Gaviota, the Santa Ynez Valley, and the mountainous backcountry.

They include works by artists with ties to land preservation including a 1943 painting of the Santa Ynez Valley by Francis M. Sedgwick, who donated a 6,000-acre portion of one of his ranches to become the Sedgwick Preserve. A watercolor by Ellen Cooper Baxley depicts a scene on her family’s Ellwood Cooper Ranch. Once spanning 2,000-acres, portions of the former ranch are now preserved as the Sperling Preserve on the Ellwood Mesa and the Coronado Butterfly Grove. In 1982, Ray Strong painted “Beyond Camino Cielo.” Strong was a founder of the Oak Group, which continues to this day and uses their members’ work to promote preservation of open space.

A selection of historical images spanning 1890 through the 1910s from the Gledhill Library’s Glass Plate Negative Collection show iconic locations and people enjoying and exploring the outdoors.

Historic hiking gear from the Museum’s Collection are also featured alongside personal scrapbooks created in 1969 by preservationist Dick Smith on loan from the Montecito Association History Archive.